Paid traffic is one of the most effective ways of making money online. It capitalizes on a website’s popularity and ensures that the website remains lucrative. There are a number of different forms of paid traffic, including finding a sponsor for a website, creating a pay wall or subscription service for the website, and receiving payments per click for every advertisement on the website. The payment per click method is perhaps the most popular of all the procedures concerning paid traffic. In the payment per click method, a company will advertise their service or product on the website, and they pay the website operator for the clicks that customers make on their advertisement. It should be noted that this is not substantially different from advertising in traditional print, radio, or television journalism; the company purchases “space” on the program and receives increased exposure and reaches a broader prospective client base. However, in the case of website advertisements, they are not charged a flat predetermined fee (as they are through traditional media) but instead on the basis of the number of times people click on their advertisement.

Because they do not pay a flat rate for their ad, if site visitors do not click on the advertisement, they do not pay. Typically, the companies are charged on the basis of a predetermined number of clicks on their ad and this also makes it very easy to monitor how often their ad is clicked on and whether or not it is popular with the audience of the given website. However, companies should make sure that they are advertising with a website that is geared toward a demographic similar to that of the company. For example, a fast food company would not likely advertise on a website that is geared toward weight loss strategies as they would be unlikely to generate significant exposure to their product; this would also result in a lack of revenue for the website as they would not receive the clicks on the advertisement. Thus, both the website and the advertising company should conduct comprehensive research beforehand and ensure a good fit.

In addition to the payment per click method, there are other approaches to paid traffic. One of these is these is for companies to pay for the amount of times that their product is advertised on a web site. Every time an advertisement is displayed on a website, it is referred to as an “impression,” and companies pay for the number of impressions on their site. Most frequently, companies are charged on increments of every 1,000 impressions; accordingly, a site must have substantial traffic in order for this to be a viable approach for paid traffic. There is also significant risk for the company that chooses to advertise through this method; while it is beneficial to the company that their advertisement appears on the web site, they have no idea whether site visitors have actually paid attention to their advertisement. It is imperative that they research which types of people visit the web site and also, whether or not they align with their target demographic.

An alternate approach to paid traffic is to make all content appearing on the site only available through subscription.

Naturally, this requires websites to be in high demand, so this method is not likely to work unless a website has already established a strong readership and a loyal following. This approach therefore works well for niche websites that attract devoted readers or people who have a dependency on the content presented on the website. In recent years, a number of print newspapers have adopted this method as people prefer to consume their news electronically. It should be noted that this approach does not preclude utilizing the point per click method as well. Overall, each of these methods provides unique possibilities for receiving paid traffic and making money online.